Summit Ventures - Light Logo
Login
Get In Touch
Anduril

Anduril
Anthropic

Anthropic
Anysphere

Anysphere
Apptronik

Apptronik
Cerebras

Cerebras
Cognition Ai

Cognition Labs
Cohere

Cohere
crusoe-squareLogo-1754598302808

Crusoe
Databricks

Databricks
Discord

Discord
Groq

Groq
kalshi

Kalshi
Kraken

Kraken
Lambda

Lambda
Lightmatter

Lightmatter
Neuralink

Neuralink
Open AI

Open AI
Perplexity

Perplexity
Polymarket

Polymarket
New_Replit_Logo

Replit
Sandbox AQ

Sandbox AQ
Saronic

Saronic
Scale Ai

Scale AI
Shield Ai

Shield AI
Space X

Space X
Stripe

Stripe

Unconventional Inc.
xAI

xAI
Home / Company / Stripe

Stripe

Last Updated November 24, 2025

Stripe is a global financial services and software company that provides APIs and infrastructure for accepting payments, managing subscriptions, running marketplaces and platforms, and embedding banking-style services into third-party products. Its core offerings—Payments, Billing, Connect, Radar, Issuing, Treasury, and related tools—allow businesses to accept 100+ payment methods in 135+ currencies while handling complex flows such as multi-party payouts, tax, fraud, and reconciliation. As of 2024–2025, Stripe processes about $1.4 trillion in annual payment volume with 38% year-over-year growth and serves roughly half of the Fortune 100 and a majority of the most prominent AI companies, positioning it as a default infrastructure layer for software-driven and AI-enabled commerce. The company has reached sustained profitability, generated an estimated $2.2 billion in free cash flow in 2024, and continues to invest heavily in areas such as AI-driven optimization, enterprise features, and stablecoin-based cross-border payments.
Company Overview: Stripe
From an informational perspective, Stripe combines large-scale payment volume, strong growth, and increasing profitability with a broadening product footprint across payments, billing, platforms, embedded finance, and AI-driven tools. It processed approximately $1.4 trillion in payment volume in 2024 (up 38% year over year), with third-party estimates placing net revenue around $5.1 billion and free cash flow at approximately $2.2 billion for the year—its first full year of profitability. Strategically, Stripe sits at the intersection of several structural trends: the continued migration of commerce online, the rise of platform and marketplace business models, and the need for global, programmable financial services that can be embedded directly into software products. Its reported penetration into the Fortune 100 and Fortune 500, along with widespread adoption among AI-native companies, supports a thesis that Stripe has become a core component of the internet’s financial stack rather than a point solution. The company’s 2024–2025 moves—such as acquiring Bridge to deepen stablecoin-based cross-border capabilities and launching an “agentic commerce” standard with OpenAI—reflect a push to be the transaction layer for AI agents and next-generation commerce flows. At the same time, Stripe remains private, operates in a highly competitive and regulated sector, and does not disclose full financial statements, which introduces uncertainty around margins by product line, customer concentration, and long-term capital allocation. Any investment analysis therefore depends on reconciling company commentary, private-market valuations, and third-party estimates. This section is intended to provide factual background on Stripe’s market position and business model. It is not investment advice, does not constitute a recommendation, and should not be relied upon as a solicitation to buy or sell any security.
Investment Highlights

Scale & Growth

  • Processed approximately $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, up about 38% year-over-year, equivalent to roughly 1.3% of global GDP (company-disclosed).
  • Third-party analysis based on internal materials and investor reporting estimates 2024 net revenue at roughly $5.1 billion, with free cash flow of about $2.2 billion and net revenue growth of ~28% year-over-year.
  • Stripe reports serving around half of the Fortune 100 and well over half of the Fortune 500, along with a large majority of the Forbes AI 50, reflecting deep penetration into both traditional enterprises and AI-native companies.
  • More than 100 customers reportedly process over $1 billion in annual volume each on Stripe, illustrating concentration among large, scaled users alongside a long tail of smaller businesses.

Funding, Valuation & Liquidity

  • Raised over $6.5 billion in a Series I round in March 2023 at a ~$50 billion valuation, primarily to provide employee liquidity rather than growth capital.
  • Subsequent tender offers and secondary sales in 2024 valued Stripe at approximately $65 billion (early 2024) and $70 billion (mid-2024), reflecting a partial recovery from the 2023 down-round while remaining below the $95 billion peak of 2021.
  • In February 2025, a large employee tender offer reportedly valued Stripe at about $91.5 billion, bringing the company close to its prior peak on the back of renewed growth and profitability.
  • Recent reporting and public reference sources suggest an internal 2025 valuation on the order of ~$107 billion (409A or similar internal benchmark), making Stripe one of the most valuable private fintech companies globally; this figure is not tied to a new primary funding round.

Profitability & Cash Generation

  • Stripe has indicated that 2024 was its first full year of profitability, and third-party sources estimate roughly $2.2 billion in free cash flow, more than double the prior year.
  • The company has stated that it expects to remain profitably cash-flow positive and to reinvest a substantial share of operating earnings into R&D and infrastructure.
  • Profitability, combined with ample cash reserves, reduces pressure for an imminent IPO and allows Stripe to use tender offers to provide liquidity to employees and early investors while staying private.

Market Recognition & Position

  • Repeatedly featured on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list, including a #10 ranking in 2025, reflecting its status as a long-running category leader in fintech and infrastructure.
  • Frequently cited in media and industry research as a top-two global online payments provider by volume and share, alongside PayPal, with strong positions in both developer-led startups and large enterprises.
  • Viewed by many analysts as a core “financial operating system” for the internet, spanning payments, billing, platforms, embedded finance, and risk.
Product & Technology Leadership

Core Payments & Commerce Stack

  • Payments: APIs and hosted checkout flows for accepting cards, wallets, bank debits, and local payment methods in 135+ currencies; optimized for authorization rates, local acquiring, and low-latency performance.
  • Billing: Subscription and invoicing platform used by hundreds of thousands of companies, supporting usage-based pricing, seat-based models, and complex discounting; integrates with major CRM and ERP systems.
  • Checkout & Payment Element: Prebuilt UI components that encapsulate best practices across 125+ payment methods, localized messaging, and A/B-tested flows designed to maximize conversion.

Platform & Embedded Finance

  • Connect: Infrastructure for platforms and marketplaces to onboard, verify, and pay out to sellers, service providers, and contractors globally, including support for split payments, multi-party fees, and regulatory compliance.
  • Issuing & Treasury: APIs to create virtual and physical cards, manage balances, and embed basic treasury functionality into third-party products, enabling software companies to offer financial services under their own brands.
  • Atlas & Sigma: Company formation and data/analytics tools to help startups incorporate, manage cap tables, and run SQL-based reporting directly on Stripe data.

Risk, Identity & Data Products

  • Radar: Machine-learning-based fraud detection and risk scoring system trained on Stripe’s global network of transactions; aims to reduce card testing and false positives while blocking fraudulent activity.
  • Identity: KYC/identity verification tools integrated into onboarding flows for platforms, lenders, and marketplaces, helping meet regulatory requirements in multiple jurisdictions.
  • Revenue & Tax Tooling: Products for revenue recognition, tax calculation, and compliance (including integrations and prior acquisitions such as TaxJar) that support finance teams at scale.

Stablecoin & Cross-Border Infrastructure

  • Bridge: Stablecoin payments infrastructure acquired by Stripe (completed in early 2025) to power faster, lower-cost cross-border money movement and on-chain settlement for selected corridors.
  • Stablecoin Payouts & Treasury: Support for stablecoin-based payouts and treasury flows, with regulatory workstreams including an OCC trust charter application to operate more bank-like stablecoin services in the U.S.

AI & Agentic Commerce

  • AI Optimization: Stripe uses machine learning extensively across fraud prevention, authorization optimization, pricing, and checkout, drawing on data from over a trillion dollars in annual payment volume.
  • Agentic Commerce Standard: Co-developed with OpenAI and other partners, the “agentic commerce” protocol is designed to let AI agents initiate transactions in a controlled, auditable way, with Stripe handling payment orchestration and compliance.
  • Developer Ecosystem: Stripe emphasizes a developer-first experience, with comprehensive documentation, SDKs, and tooling that has made it a default choice for software startups and AI-native companies.
 Market Position & Strategic Advantage

Role in the Global Payments Ecosystem

  • Stripe is widely regarded as one of the top two global online payments platforms by volume and share, alongside PayPal, with particularly strong penetration among digital-native and software-driven businesses.
  • Processing ~$1.4 trillion in TPV in 2024 at 38% year-over-year growth places Stripe significantly ahead of most traditional acquirers in online and API-based commerce.
  • The company’s footprint spans 40+ countries directly, with support for 100+ payment methods and extensive local acquiring across North America, Europe, and parts of Asia-Pacific.

Enterprise & AI-Native Adoption

  • Stripe reports that around half of the Fortune 100 and more than 60% of the Fortune 500 are customers, reflecting growing upmarket traction beyond early-stage startups.
  • A majority of the Forbes AI 50 and many of the most prominent AI model and agent companies reportedly run on Stripe, underscoring its positioning as default financial infrastructure for AI-native businesses.
  • Stripe’s platform and embedded finance products (Connect, Issuing, Treasury) anchor it within the business models of leading marketplaces, SaaS platforms, and vertical software providers.

Competitive Landscape

  • PayPal/Braintree: A major competitor with larger overall payments share, especially in consumer-branded wallets and legacy e-commerce; often co-exists with Stripe, with merchants using both providers.
  • Adyen: Strong in large-enterprise omni-channel payments with high profitability; competes directly in enterprise deals, particularly in Europe, but with somewhat slower TPV growth compared with Stripe’s recent trajectory.
  • Block/Square and others: Compete more directly in SMB and in-person segments; overlapping primarily where omnichannel merchants seek a single provider for online and offline payments.
  • Regional payment processors, local gateways, and bank acquirers also compete on price and local presence, but often lack Stripe’s global developer platform and product breadth.

Strategic Positioning

  • Strategically positioned as a “financial operating system” for the internet rather than a single-point payment gateway, with products spanning payments, billing, platforms, lending partners, fraud, and embedded finance.
  • Long-term differentiation stems from developer experience, breadth of APIs, data network effects (e.g., card recognition and fraud models), and tight integration into customers’ workflows and codebases.
  • Ongoing focus on AI, stablecoins, and embedded finance aims to keep Stripe central as commerce shifts toward agent-driven transactions and software-mediated financial services.
Financial Opportunity

Revenue Model & Mix

  • Stripe’s core revenue model is transaction-based: it earns a small fee on each payment processed, often expressed as a percentage of volume plus a fixed per-transaction amount.
  • Additional revenue streams include subscription and usage fees for Billing, platform fees for Connect, fraud and risk products (Radar), card issuance fees, interest/spread income on certain treasury flows (in partnership with banks), and revenue from value-added tools such as Sigma and Tax services.
  • Third-party sources suggest that net revenue (after network costs and partner fees) reached roughly $5.1 billion in 2024, with gross payment volume of ~$1.4 trillion and a net take rate below 1%.

Growth Drivers

  • Continued growth in e-commerce and online services, particularly in emerging markets and cross-border flows, expands Stripe’s TPV base even absent share gains.
  • Upmarket expansion into large enterprises and global platforms increases average customer size and introduces stickier, multi-product relationships (payments, Billing, Connect, Issuing, Treasury).
  • Embedded finance and platform use cases (e.g., marketplaces, SaaS platforms embedding financial services) can drive incremental revenue per customer as Stripe powers both merchant-of-record and underlying financial workflows.
  • Stablecoin and on-chain payment capabilities via the Bridge acquisition may improve economics for certain cross-border corridors and open new use cases in remittances and global B2B payments.
  • AI-driven optimization (fraud, authorization rates, pricing, checkout) can increase customer revenue and, by extension, Stripe’s own transaction and value-added service fees.
Company Snapshot

Founded: 2010

Headquarters: South San Francisco, CA, USA & Dublin, Ireland

Founders: Patrick Collison & John Collison

2024 Total Payment Volume (TPV): ~$1.4 trillion (+38% year-over-year; ~1.3% of global GDP, company-disclosed)

2024 Net Revenue: ~$5.1 billion (third-party estimate, not company-disclosed)

2024 Free Cash Flow: ~$2.2 billion (third-party estimate; first full year of profitability)

2024 Net Revenue Growth: ~28% year-over-year (third-party estimate)

Active Businesses: ~1.3 million globally (company commentary plus third-party estimates)

Enterprise Penetration: ~50% of the Fortune 100 and >60% of the Fortune 500 as customers; ~78% of the Forbes AI 50 using Stripe

Latest Completed Valuation: ~$91.5 billion (February 2025 employee tender offer / secondary sale)

Latest Internal Valuation Indicator: ~$107 billion (late 2025 internal 409A / valuation estimate; not a primary funding round)

Prior Peak Valuation: $95 billion (March 2021 primary funding round)

Total Capital Raised: ~${9.8} billion across multiple funding rounds (third-party estimate)

Key 2024–2025 Liquidity Events: April 2024 tender (~$65 billion valuation), late 2024 Sequoia-led secondary (~$70 billion), February 2025 tender (~$91.5 billion valuation)

Latest Major Acquisition: Bridge (stablecoin payments infrastructure; acquisition completed February 2025, widely reported at ~$1.1 billion)

Primary Sector: Global payments, embedded finance & financial infrastructure

Regulatory Footprint: Licensed/registered in multiple jurisdictions; supports PSD2/SCA in Europe and a broad mix of local payment methods worldwide

Ownership: Privately held; significant ownership retained by founders and employees alongside venture and growth-equity investors

How Summit Ventures Works

Summit Ventures offers accredited investors exclusive access to shares in the secondary market, providing:

  • Network Access: Exposure to opportunities sourced through Summit’s
    relationships.
  • Market-Based Pricing: Valuations informed by current private-market activity.
  • Simplified Process: Streamlined subscription and administrative support.
  • Portfolio Exposure: Participation in select private technology companies.
Risk Disclaimer

Investment in private companies involves substantial risk and is suitable only for sophisticated investors who can bear the loss of their entire investment. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Other Companies of Interest
View More

About Stripe

Stripe is a global financial infrastructure platform that provides payment processing, billing, payouts, embedded finance, and risk tooling for online and omnichannel businesses. Founded in 2010 by Patrick and John Collison, the company has evolved from a developer-focused payments API into a broad operating system for internet commerce, serving startups, platforms, and large enterprises across dozens of countries. Stripe’s dual headquarters are in South San Francisco and Dublin, and its product suite spans core payments, subscription billing, marketplaces (Connect), fraud prevention (Radar), issuing, and treasury services.

In its February 2025 annual letter, Stripe reported processing roughly $1.4 trillion of total payment volume (TPV) in 2024, up 38% year over year and equivalent to about 1.3% of global GDP. Third-party analysis based on internal materials and investor reporting estimates Stripe’s 2024 net revenue at about $5.1 billion (roughly 28% growth) with approximately $2.2 billion in free cash flow, marking the company’s first full year of profitability. Stripe says about half of the Fortune 100, over 60% of the Fortune 500, and a large majority of the Forbes AI 50 use Stripe, underscoring its role as core payment and billing infrastructure for high-growth and AI-native companies.

Through 2024–2025, Stripe has focused on two major strategic themes: deeper enterprise and platform penetration, and expansion into AI- and crypto-enabled financial rails. The company acquired stablecoin infrastructure provider Bridge (deal completed in early 2025, widely reported at about $1.1 billion) to support faster and cheaper cross-border payments, and it co-developed an “agentic commerce” standard with OpenAI that allows AI agents to initiate payments using Stripe while preserving user control and compliance. Stripe has also continued to appear on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list, ranking #10 in 2025, and is widely viewed as one of the most valuable private fintech companies globally, with recent private-market indications suggesting an internal valuation on the order of $100+ billion following a $91.5 billion tender offer in February 2025.

This profile is based on publicly available information and third-party estimates and is provided for informational purposes only. Summit Ventures is not affiliated with Stripe and does not offer or recommend securities; Summit Ventures facilitates introductions through a network of partners. Nothing in this profile should be construed as investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.